I had some East Coast business to attend to this past week; my staff were busy checking out some basketball players in the NIT for me… I’m hoping to sign some of them to contracts. To help our O-line, of course. All the same, while scouting was happening at Madison Square Garden, I headed out in the Mystery Machine from the Big Apple, well into the heart of New Jersey, in order to start some investigations into a very curious case, indeed…

THE JEANNETTE DEPALMA MURDER

Location: Springfield Township, Union County, NJ

Date: August 7th, 1972

The Story: On the morning of September 19th, 1972, a dog out for a walk with his owner in Houdaille Quarry returned with a decomposing arm in its mouth; after police investigation, the arm was matched with Jeannette DePalma, a 16-year-old girl who had gone missing over a month and a half previously. A massive search of the area led the authorities to find the remainder of her body on a cliff nearby the quarry, which locally had been called “The Devil’s Teeth” for many decades previously. In the weeks after the body’s discovery, many disturbing details began to emerge about the teenager’s death, particularly amongst the details that her death appeared to be a part of a ritual sacrifice of some variety.

What’s Weird: Police found DePalma’s body almost fully decomposed, with her remains surrounded by a number of objects associated with the occult, including some small wooden crosses surrounding what may have been a makeshift altar made of fallen logs and branches. Some accounts also have the remains of animals hanging from trees nearby.

The coroner’s office was unable to establish an official cause of death, due to DePalma’s body being found so badly decomposed; they believed that the strongest likelihood was that she died from strangulation, but still couldn’t conclusively prove it. The autopsy also noted that the body had an usually high amount of lead in it, which is also inexplicable.

With the details of this murder being so horrific and grisly, local residents were racked with fear at DePalma’s death. Many actually refused to go on record with details of the murder, preferring to stay anonymous to newspapers and magazines covering the details… even decades after the fact. What’s also curious about this murder is all of the conflicting reports from the local police; half of the officers say that the case file in question is either missing or destroyed (thanks to flooding from Hurricane Floyd in 1999), while the other half have stated that they also didn’t feel comfortable going on record with details of the case – extremely unusual for a police department.

Most of the details of this case were received from anonymous letters delivered to the police in unmarked envelopes; the writing often seemed to have a creepy or sometimes threatening undertone to it, despite being from many different sources. Also curious is the story of “Red”, the man who lived nearby the scene of the crime in a rundown shack who worked as a caddy at the local golf course; he had been initially suspected of DePalma’s murder after being interviewed by the cops, but was ultimately never arrested nor charged with anything. However, something spooked the man so greatly about DePalma’s murder that soon after his police interview, he left Springfield forever and was never seen again.

What might have happened?

The Jeannette DePalma murder is extremely curious, especially for a case that has so little development in it, even forty-five-plus years later; from the details that the public does know about it, most people, police included, believe the murder is directly associated with a cult occurrence – possibly by Satanists, but most likely a group of witches. This still doesn’t account for all of the possible weirdness of this case – why are locals so reticent to speak publicly about it, not to mention the police themselves? In a book entitled Death on the Devil’s Teeth, authors Jesse P. Pollack and Mark Moran had to re-trace a lot of the original steps of the case, and the book has a lot of evidence to suggest that there may be a police cover-up involved with the murder, and the possibility this may not have been a stand-alone event either.

Adding to the paranoia and fear about witchcraft being involved in this murder is due to the location of where the body was found; the Watchung Reservation, a forested areas in Union County, immediately borders the cliff where DePalma’s body was found, and it has apparently been known locally for years as a hotbed of activity for devil worship, black magic, and dealings in the occult.

Part of the truth may lie in what was really true about Jeannette DePalma’s personality and lifestyle; a lot of residents remember her as a quiet, church-going girl, who may have either been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or possibly may have been targeted by witches due to attempting to convert them to Christianity while at school. Others have different accounts about her, saying that she had a notable rebellious streak to her, and may have fallen in with a more untrustworthy crowd in the months leading up to her death. At any rate, the fear that continues to grip the community over her murder, even almost five decades onwards, is extremely unusual and will likely prevent any conclusive proof from coming forward in the near future.

Coach Carroll’s Hypothesis: Look, nobody wants to come out and say it, but isn’t it just the strangest coincidence that a cult-like murder occurs in the summer of 1972, and then six months later, the Miami Dolphins win a Super Bowl after an undefeated season? I don’t want to insinuate things, but, I mean, come on, people! The fact that there’s no immediate New Jersey connections to anyone on the team is just to try and mislead from going any deeper… but I’m going with my gut on this one.

Information for this article taken from here, here, here, here and here. 

Banner image courtesy of Low Commander of the Super Soldiers.